MENEO : PACHANGOLOGY

Interesting piece that I picked up here from our dude Rigo aka Meneo that he wrote for Vicious Mag:

Colloquially, the term often used as “pachanga” describes an obvious formula when you play too much hits as a dj, or when your sound as a producer is just as tiresome as those on the charts. Certainly, its use depends on the threshold of what each one considers popular, however I always wonder if we refer to a feeling or a style when we use this word, because some of us can use the same expression either to describe a minimal session as to describe a cumbia mixtape . I’ve heard young people drop this attribute on styles like EDM for it’s self-evident party easiness, but also to Nu-House for its predictable adherence to 808/909′s use and those altered vocal tones.

Therefore, in this article and its attached mixtape, I will attempt to recall how on my so-called “club scene“, this musical adjective appeared and how it began to be used to describe a more notorious prescence of syncopated grooves, organic percussion and global vocals, essential elements of pachangueo. A mixture that surely seems normal in today’s panorama, but which ten years ago was strange to find in the cold and forceful techno family, rather full of synthesizer and glitches.

My friends and me are sipping through some 3€ gintonics here at the Palentino while we look back. We remember that we perceived those infinite bongo figures in various tribal trance tracks, so we agreed that the first blends of these ingredients came from underground techno producers as usual, but then pointed out that it was Luciano and Villalobos who with some latin blood on their veins, decided to isolate these peculiar primitive sounds and give them a new home, less hygienic, clinical and aesthetic than it’s minimal counterpart. Then our minds exploded with Monika Kruse‘s “Latin Lovers“, a track that set the sky as limit and made us figure out that “funk is to house as tropical is to pachangueo “.

Then came along producers like Switch, Congorock and even a young Duke Dumont, who accelerated the same rhythm from reggaeton to 130bpm and deposed the 4×4 reign, waving the maximal flag on worldwide ears and set the bases for the upcoming divergent styles such as: uk garage, fidget house, dutch house, moombahton and electropical, the latter being a the word I invented to try to describe the sound of my first album as Meneo.

We can absolutely find hundreds of roads to Rome and search the etymological roots of this concept until we arrive to the one and only Perez Prado and everything that boasts maracas. Anyway, at least we can affirm that the fine line that helps us distinguish what is pachangueo from what’s not will always be personal, depending directly from the sound conscience and musical background of each individual. Now I’ll let you openly question everything I’ve previously written and I invite you to put on your earphones or turn up your stereo for the following mixtape, which represent a reversed journey through my pachanga gems, maybe similar ones to those that we can somehow find in any dj set around the world and which will perhaps makes us feel as if we were in a white beach, celebrating the wedding of our best friend, playing drums, barefooted.